Sunday, June 26, 2011

Chew is one of the best fucking comic books that I have read. Seriously.

It works like this: Written by John Layman and featuring the art of Rob Guillory, Chew is funny as hell, albeit in manner that surrounds itself with nastiness. Chew is violent, but has a heart. Chew is something of an investigative story, but saying that fails to do justice to what Chew really is, which is completely awesome.

See, Tony Chu is a cibopath. This means that he gets a psychic impression from whatever he eats: the history of the food is laid bare. Who prepared it, how it was prepared, how the animal or plant was slaughtered or treated with chemicals...all the way back. Anything he eats will give him that flash of history. Anything.

This is a world where poultry is illegal and when we meet him, Tony is working as a vice-cop investigating a black market chicken operation. Yes, there is a certain amount of absurdity played straight in Chew. Recruited from the Philadelphia PD into the special investigations division of the Food & Drug Administration (which has a crazy amount of authority here), Tony's world opens up and as such, so does ours.

I'm not sure Chew can be well described or well defined. Chew is its own thing. Chew is mind-blowingly awesome.

Right now there are only 19 issues published (three collections worth, plus change), so get in on it now. I believe there is a story arc planned to go 60 issues. You want to read this. You need to read this.

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comments:

Hi Joe! So two things: First, just sending you a link to a widget from Shelf Awareness. Your readers will have the chance to win signed, first edition books, and it auto-updates with the new offers every few weeks. If you're interested, here's the link to the contest with more info http://bit.ly/kpC8pH and some background info on Shelf Awareness http://bit.ly/luZsZl. Second, this review seriously made me chuckle. it also made me really disgusted so then I chuckled again out of not wanting to gag, lol. The book does sound insane, haha, but you made me curious and I'm thinking about getting it. I may have to take a break from eating meat for a while though, even sausage...Nope can never give up sausage. Anyway feel free to email if you have any questions or just want to talk disgusting books, lol. I'd love to hear from you :)Sincerely,Brittany Fosterbrittany@banyanbranch.com

Interesting post, info! I always strive to create new creatures, plots in my stories too, that's why i guess this sounds so intriguing..;). I guess there are a lot of books, stories with the usual, ordinary already characters like kings, knights, princesses, vampires, dwarves, wizards with sharp hats, etc? We can read about them in almost every book of the genre? There should be new, unseen and unknown characters, creatures in the stories. Creatures like weightless korks, glowing, living balls, night fruit, fish-keepers, Brown faces, Fiery men, etc I use in some of my works sound more interesting than the usual? I know the most important in the fantasy genre are the wisdom, good plot and writing skills but some "fresh blood" of new characters would make the fantasy books better? Keep the good work going! Your blog is a must to follow for any true fan of fantasy/sci-fy, the most serious genres, BTW! LET THE WONDERFUL NOISE OF THE SEA ALWAYS SOUNDS IN YOUR EARS! (a greeting of the water dragons' hunters - my Tale Of The Rock Pieces).